Wednesday, November 29, 2017

A House tax bill could push thousands of US graduate
students out of careers in science and technology, weakening the US edge in
those fields. Are Republicans hoping to replace them with immigrant scientists
and tech workers already educated by their countries of origin?

Photo: Michele Piacquadio / Getty Images

By David L. Wilson, Truthout

November 29, 2017

One of the many outrages in the tax bill passed by the House
of Representatives on November 16 is the elimination or reduction of tax breaks
for many college and graduate school students. Probably the most drastic
measure is one that could affect approximately 145,000 grad students now
working as low-paid research or teaching assistants. These students might see
their federal tax payments rise to as much as $10,000 a year, enough to force
many of them to drop out of school. About 60 percent of the students are in the
fields known collectively as STEM -- science, technology, engineering and math.

What is especially striking about this measure is that the
same Republican politicians that pushed it through the House claim they want to
"make America great again."[...]

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Abuse of this nature is "very widespread" at
Hutto, said one woman who has accused a guard at the detention facility of
repeatedly sexually assaulting her. "It is a big problem in this
place," she said.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

By Tina Vasquez, Rewire

November 22, 2017

More women have made public allegations of sexual abuse at
the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, after Laura Monterrosa came
forward earlier this month with claims that a guard at the facility had
sexually abused her over several months. Monterrosa continues to be detained at
Hutto and says the guard is still employed at the facility.

In a Rewire interview conducted Friday through an
interpreter, Monterrosa claimed that she had seen her abuser just moments
prior. “When was the last time you saw her,” the interpreter asked Monterrosa
in Spanish. “Now, just about 20 minutes ago,” Monterrosa responded.[...]

Sunday, November 19, 2017

“Not Forgotten”: Graves of people who died trying to cross the border. Photo: David Bacon

U.S. Illegally Denying Immigrants Their Right to Seek Asylum
at the Mexican Border, According to Lawsuit

By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept

November 16, 2017

The Trump Administration may be engaged in widespread
violations of U.S. and international law at the southern U.S. border, according
to new filings in a California lawsuit. The filings offer the latest piece of
evidence of a systematic campaign aimed at turning away asylum-seekers, actions
linked to the embrace of hard-line immigration enforcement policies at the
heart of the president’s rise to power.[…]

The Border Patrol Doesn’t Know What to Do With the Thousands
of Agents Trump Wants to Hire

By Kathryn Casteel, FiveThirtyEight

November 15, 2017

President Trump signed two executive orders soon after his
inauguration calling for the Department of Homeland Security to hire thousands
of new Border Patrol and immigration agents. But now, two new government
analyses show that there may be major obstacles to meeting those expectations.
The department has not only fallen short on hiring efforts even before Trump
issued his orders but also can’t provide data to show how it would use
additional agents — or that there’s even a need for them.[…]

[T]he way the border is objectified and used can make
people in Mexico suspicious about how people on the other side of the wall see
them, when they see them at all.

By David Bacon, Capital and Main, American Prospect

October 26, 2017

For almost an hour Laura, Moises and I drove through the
dusty neighborhoods of Tecate, looking for Kikito. Tecate is a small city in the dry hills of Baja California, next
to the U.S. border. It's famous for a
huge brewery, although today most workers find jobs in local maquiladoras.

When we asked for directions, a couple of people had heard
of Kikito, but couldn't tell us where he was.
Most didn't know who we were talking about. […]

Friday, November 17, 2017

The Trump administration is forging ahead with its
assault on immigrants. For example, White House chief of staff John Kelly, a
man the New York Times once labeled “sensible,”
continues to display the vicious
tendencies he revealed during his brief tenure as Homeland Security
head. The latest instance is his unsuccessful effort to terminate Temporary
Protected Status for tens of thousands of Hondurans (see below). But the Trump
program is generating renewed resistance to the anti-immigrant agenda:

Some
Trump supporters are getting upset when they learn that the “bad hombres”
being detained may actually be friends and neighbors.

A
dozen cities are developing programs to provide free legal counsel to help
people caught up in the immigration court system.

A
media organization is pushing television networks to end their negative
portrayal of immigrants. (A study finds that 50 percent of Latino
immigrant characters were depicted as criminals in programs from 2014 to
2016—which could have a lot to do with public belief in a nonexistent
immigrant crime wave.)

The administration’s anti-immigrant policies may be
starting to backfire.—TPOI editor

On Monday, as the Department of Homeland Security prepared
to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands of Hondurans living in the
United States, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly called acting secretary
Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them, according to current and former
administration officials.[…]

Two children video chat a deported friend. Photo: Erika Schultz/Seattle Times

A Washington county that went for Trump is shaken as
immigrant neighbors start disappearing

By Nina Shapiro, Seattle Times

November 9, 2017 (updated November 15, 2017)

LONG BEACH, Pacific County — Named after a character in a
cowboy book, Police Chief Flint Wright describes himself as pretty
conservative.

A portrait of Ronald Reagan hangs in his office, along with
photos of John Wayne, and his father and grandfather on horses — capturing the
rural lifestyle of Pacific County, which curves around Willapa Bay in the
state’s southwest corner.[…]

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released Ny
Nourn, the sexual assault survivor it plans to deport to Cambodia, after an
extensive social media campaign.

Nourn, who immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 5 after
spending her early childhood in a Thai refugee camp, is out on bail after
organizations and individual supporters rallied for her release, crowdsourcing
more than $10,000 to meet her bond. The remainder of the money will be used to
support her transition to freedom.[…]

A New York courtroom gave every detained immigrant a lawyer.
The results were staggering.

And now a dozen more cities are getting on board.

By Dara Lind, Vox

November 9, 2017

Omar Siagha has been in the US for 52 years. He’s a legal
permanent resident with three children. He’d never been to prison, he says,
before he was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention — faced
with the loss of his green card for a misdemeanor.

His brother tried to seek out lawyers who could help Siagha,
but all they offered, in his words, were “high numbers and no hope” — no
guarantee, in other words, that they’d be able to get him out of detention for
all the money they were charging.[…]

Research shows that half of characters were shown in a
negative light, but with a new generation of showrunners, the tide could soon
turn

Eva Recinos, The Guardian

November 14, 2017

When the current administration announced that Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) would be coming to an end, Hollywood
reacted. Ava DuVernay, Shailene Woodley, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cristela Alonzo
and many others used social media and other platforms to voice their concern.

DuVernay called the move a “disgusting display of prejudice,
ignorance and heartlessness”. Celebrities including Woodley tweeted information
about the impact of Daca with the hashtags #DefendDACA and #HeretoStay. Miranda
kept it short and simple: “Okay. The Bad Man continues to do bad. Your move,
Congress.”[…]

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Under a canopy of large white flags printed with the
Veterans for Peace logo, a group of activists and protestors from across the
country marched through downtown Nogales on Saturday carrying signs and
chanting slogans in opposition to U.S. military intervention in Latin America.

A weekend of events in Ambos Nogales and Southern Arizona
that included vigils, concerts, workshops and the protest march, the second
annual Border Encuentro is the re-imagining of longstanding School of the
Americas Watch protests in Fort Benning, Ga., with organizers calling for an
end to U.S. policies that they say are the root causes of migration and have
had devastating effects on refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants.

“We’ve been at this for 25 years before coming to the border
last year. We realized it was time to continue to call for the closing of the
school but to make a closer connection to our solidarity with the issues of our
country’s cruelty dealing with immigration,” said Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who
helped found SOA Watch, the organization behind the protests. “The detention
centers, the wall, which we see as a symbol of racism, especially now, with
(President Donald Trump).”

Washington, DC & cities nationwide – Today, just over
two months after Trump killed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
program, over a thousand immigrant youth and people of conscience took over the
Hart Senate Building at the nation’s Capitol to demand Congress pass a clean
Dream Act before the end of this year: a path to citizenship with permanent
protection and no dangerous enforcement add-ons.

New data released today underscores the urgency for a clean
Dream Act now as 7,901 undocumented youth have
already lost DACA protections since September 5th of this year.

Over 1,500 young people walked out of DC Capitol area
schools and traveled from Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Georgia,
Massachusetts, California, New York, Kansas, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.[...]

They ditched school and marched to Capitol Hill en masse,
then filled four floors of balconies in the vast atrium of the Hart Senate
Office Building. Silent at first, fists raised in the air, they soon erupted
into bellowing chants that echoed through the massive marble-clad room.

“Dream Act. Dream Act.”

“Sí se puede. Sí se puede.”

The demonstration Thursday involving high school and college
students from the Washington region and beyond was the latest attempt by
undocumented immigrants and their advocates to keep Congress focused on their
plight.[…]

First DREAMer deported under Trump arrested again for trying
to enter U.S.

Alan Gomez, USA Today

November 8, 2017

The first known DREAMer to allege he was improperly deported
by U.S. Border Patrol agents was arrested for trying to illegally re-enter the
country for the second time this year, authorities said Wednesday.

Juan
Manuel Montes, 23, was caught late Monday after he was spotted on the
U.S. side of the border by agents monitoring video feeds near Calexico, Calif.,
where he had lived for most of his life, according to a Border Patrol
statement. Montes ran for about 200 yards, dropped to the ground, tried to flee
again as Border Patrol agents approached him, but was quickly caught and
arrested.

Saturday, November 4, 2017

For years anti-immigrant pundits and politicians have
been denouncing undocumented women they say come here to have “anchor
babies”—U.S. citizen children who supposedly will protect them from deportation. For
example, during the 2016 campaign Donald Trump claimedthat birthright citizenship was “the biggest magnet for illegal
immigration.”

Of course, it’s hard to imagine anything more absurd than
the idea that actual women would risk their lives crossing deserts and
mountains in order to have children who would have to wait 21 years before
applying for legal status for their parents. And as Yale student Viviana Andazola
Marquez’s powerful New York Times op-ed reminds us, the immigration authorities
can still turn grown children’s applications down and put their parents in
deportation proceedings.

Then there’s the case of the 17-year-old undocumented
“Jane Doe” being detained in Texas. After arriving here, she learned that she
was pregnant. She opted for an abortion, but the immigration authorities tried
to deny her access to the procedure—that is, they tried to force her to
have a so-called “anchor baby.” Could there be any greater hypocrisy? Maybe.
The ACLU sued on the girl’s behalf, and eventually she was allowed to terminate
the pregnancy. Now Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department is looking for a way to
punish the ACLU’s lawyers for helping the girl.—TPOI editor

[For two other recent examples of immigration officials abusing
their powers in order to deny the rights of young women and girls, go hereand here.]

Photo: Courtesy Viviana Andazola Marquez

I Accidentally Turned My Dad In to Immigration Services

By Viviana Andazola Marquez, New York Times

October 24, 2017

This month my father and I drove to the United States
Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Centennial, Colo., for a routine
visit. I offered to drive because my dad was too nervous and excited to take
the wheel. “How long have we waited for this day?” he asked me. He had been
told to come in for a final interview before he could get approved for legal
permanent residency.

But the meeting turned into a nightmare. Several hours after
we arrived, I found myself alone, in disbelief. My dad had been detained and
was facing deportation proceedings.[...]

The Trump Officials Making Abortion an Issue at the U.S.’s
Refugee Office

By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker

October 26, 2017

The Department of Health and Human Services has a
trillion-dollar operating budget, a staff of close to eighty thousand, and more
than a hundred programs under its watch, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Food
and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It
also oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a relatively small program
tasked with caring for recently arrived refugees. During the past month, O.R.R.,
in defiance of state and federal court orders, tried to keep a
seventeen-year-old girl in its custody from having an abortion. Identified only
as “Jane Doe,” she was living in an O.R.R.-funded shelter in Texas, where state
law prohibits abortions after twenty weeks. At issue wasn’t the use of federal
money (a nonprofit raised the funds necessary for the abortion) or logistics
(the girl’s legal guardian had offered to transport her to and from a medical
facility). The matter was political.[…]

A drawn-out court battle between the Trump administration
and an undocumented teenager over her right to get an abortion ended Wednesday
morning, when the teen received an abortion after weeks of legal wrangling.
VICE News Tonight on HBO exclusively interviewed the 17-year-old immigrant,
known in court papers as Jane Doe, in Texas last Thursday after she received
state-mandated counseling about the procedure.[…]

WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary Supreme Court filing on
Friday, the Justice Department accused the American Civil Liberties Union of
misconduct in the case of an undocumented teenager in government custody known
as Jane Doe. The teenager obtained an abortion last month over the government’s
objection after an appeals court allowed it.[…]

SAN ANTONIO — The federal government has released
10-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez. The American Civil Liberties Union brought a
lawsuit seeking to release her from government custody and reunite her with her
family.

“Rosa Maria is finally free. We’re thrilled that she can go
home to heal surrounded by her family's love and support,” said Michael Tan,
staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Despite our relief,
Border Patrol’s decision to target a young girl at a children’s hospital
remains unconscionable. No child should go through this trauma and we are
working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”[…]

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

We’re Suing the Government for Its Detention and Abuse of
Rosa Maria, a 10-Year-Old Child With Cerebral Palsy

By Amrit Cheng, ACLU

October 31, 2017

At this very moment, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is
detaining Rosa Maria Hernandez, a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who recently
underwent gallbladder surgery, and is refusing to release her into the care of
her family, despite her doctor’s advice. How exactly did this child become the
Trump administration’s target for deportation? It’s an egregious case of
government overreach, and now the subject of an American Civil
Liberties Union lawsuit.[...]

As you know, many immigrants to the United States come
from Latin American and the Caribbean, and understanding developments in those
regions is an important part of understanding how to address immigration policy.

Recently Upside
Down World, an indispensable source for news from the Latin American
grassroots, relaunched after a brief hiatus. Upside Down World is now
looking for ways to continue and expand its coverage. The site is seeking
monthly subscribers, as described below. Please join us in supporting this
important effort.

Thanks,

TPOI authors

Since launching in 2003, Upside Down World has received no
funding or support from any government or corporation; our reporting is free of
state or corporate influence, allowing us to share analyses and follow stories
without constraint. So we depend on you, our readership, to sustain and expand
this grassroots media outlet. Your monthly subscription will help provide fair
compensation for everyone’s work at Upside Down World—the only way to guarantee
quality on-the-ground reporting, analyses, and translations.

About The Politics of Immigration

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers is a book that goes beyond soundbites to tackle concerns about immigration in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. For immigrants and supporters, the book is a useful tool to confront stereotypes and disinformation. For those who are undecided about immigration, it lays out the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion. Ideal for classroom use, the updated and expanded 2017 edition provides a succinct overview of U.S. immigration history, policy, and practice, with detailed notes guiding readers toward further exploration.
Guskin and Wilson have written extensively on immigration and facilitated dozens of dialogues on the topic with students, community activists, congregations, and other public audiences. To arrange a dialogue or for more information, contact them at thepoliticsofimmigration@gmail.com.
To stay in the loop on author events and related resources, follow the book on Twitter (@Immigration_QA) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ImmigrationQA/).